Saturday, August 23, 2014

and they are not the colour they appear on the screen! This is my usual camera problem with purple. Try to imagine the flowers in the photo above in this deep purple colour:

because that's what they look like. Wonderful! And on top of them looking gorgeous, the warmer weather over the last couple of days seems to have brought out their fragrance so they are perfuming the whole yard.

Friday, August 22, 2014

A trip to central Victoria to see two very different gallery exhibits.

First, a stop to change drivers and check out some trees. A lot of the small trees in the paddock across the highway started life in my backyard:

This is the land where we planted TreeProject trees I grew in 2011 and 2012.

Next stop, Bendigo Gallery for the V&A exhibit, Undressed: 350 Years of Fashion in Underwear. No photos allowed, unfortunately. It is not a big exhibition, but I had a good look around before large numbers of people began to arrive at about midday. Get there in the morning if you are going!

Stone work on a building in View St, Bendigo:

I wouldn't mind something like that on the thermal mass wall in our new house.

After lunch something completely different, Bendigo Trailers and Hardware (dud website, but amazing in real life), which doesn't sound like a demolition yard, but most of it is:

Boxes of unused tiles from around the world in one small part of the yard out the back.

Home via Castlemaine, where the gallery has a small exhibition of very moving portraits by Peter Wegner of 10 centenarians. Each work includs a few words about the subject's thoughts on turning 100, which were fascinating to read. Worth seeing if you are in the area before the end of August.

Found a nice door-handle in one Castlemaine business, and loved these hexagon tiles on the doorstep of another building:

Thursday, August 21, 2014

The first hive has two supers without a queen excluder, and the queen has been busy laying lots of new babies throughout the hive:

There is very little stored honey, as the bees have been feeding thousands of larvae. This photo shows a little stored honey around the top edge (the pale yellow cells), lots of capped brood (the darker yellow cells), and some larvae almost ready to be capped (the whitish cells towards the bottom). The dark cells in the centre are where baby bees have already emerged, and most of them have a new small larva developing in the bottom of the cell. There are lots of bees on the frame, caring for the larvae.

It wasn't warm enough today to pull the whole hive apart, but I suspect there could be some queen cells somewhere in this hive, and these bees are getting ready to swarm in spring. Today we added an empty third super above a queen excluder, to give them some honey storage space. Will that stop them swarming?

The second hive is very different. This one has a queen-excluder between the first and second super, which means the queen can only lay eggs in the bottom half of the hive. Contrast this frame from above the excluder with that from the first hive:

This one is full of honey. There are few bees on it because there isn't much for them to do once the honey cell is full and capped. The whole top super was pretty full of stored honey. We removed four full frames and replaced them with empty ones, and also added a third super with eight empty frames. So this hive now has lots of available storage space for honey. Will they want to swarm, or will they be happy filling up the hive again?

What happens to these two hives over the next few weeks will be interesting, and could influence how we set the bees up for future winters.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Afternoon tea with some quilting friends, and I attached the last pieces to my version of Geta Grama's Flower Ball as we talked and "tea-ed":

So here it is:

There are still a few little seams to do here and there before I start joining the larger chunks together. Once I start it will become much harder to carry the project around with me. The chunks all fit in an A4 plastic box, but joined together they won't. I don't want to take the card pieces out just yet, so will have to think about how to transport the whole thing.

I'll be linking this post to Sarah's "HELP for Hexie-aholics" link-up once she puts it up.
Added later: Here's the link-up! Check out the other projects from around the world.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

It's big, but the product range is much narrower than in the shows I remember from years ago.

There are about 20 to 30 stands selling "investments". There are the usual stands selling all the products that are only ever sold at these shows: the mops, painting gadgets, vege peelers, drills and secateurs that for some reason aren't available in shops. And if you want to re-model your kitchen, there are half a dozen or more people to sell you new cupboards. But there is very little lighting, almost nothing for the garden (a bit of sculpture, and stupid floating crocodile heads), no furniture, and only one stand with floor coverings. Some of the things I was hoping to see weren't there, but I did get to check out the haiku fan, solar hot water, and the particular type of windows we need for our new house.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Denim instead of vinyl, denim straps instead of polypropylene. This one was completely sewn on the treadle machine. And I just realised as I looked at this picture that I left off one of the pockets the original had!

Saturday, August 9, 2014

The main sewing I've done recently is of three polar-fleece jumpers for Sam. They are based on this pattern, but I left off the leg binding. They seem to be helping keep her snug and warm on these cold days.